


West Toward Home

by Deannie



Series: Cowboys and Zombies [4]
Category: The Magnificent Seven (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Zombies, Gen, Old West Zombie AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-07
Updated: 2016-04-07
Packaged: 2018-05-31 20:18:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,518
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6486043
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Deannie/pseuds/Deannie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I’m not in the mood to be charitable to anyone looking to rob me. The roads are becoming lawless as this sickness—whatever it is—spreads. It’s hard to know who to believe. The papers out East say it’s a form of rabies or bovine madness. The ones to the north call it a wasting disease that rots out the mind and leaves the person beastial. The ones in California and Mexico and here in the West call it a lot of things, but they all add up to the dead walking....</p>
            </blockquote>





	West Toward Home

My name is Chris Larabee, and two and a half years ago, I had a soul. A soul, a wife, a son…

Now I have nothing but the contents of my saddlebags and the hope of enough whiskey to help me forget what I’ve lost.

“So you’re heading west, eh?” The bartender shakes his head. “Brave man.”

I snort, draining my whiskey. “Why?” I ask, smiling in a way that’s been known to put off a curious fellow or three. “Because of the living corpses?”

He blanches just at the words. Lord, people are so gullible. “Don’t make fun, friend,” he says sharply. “You hear things, in a job like mine.” He shudders and pours me another. “The things some people have seen,” he whispers.

I look out the window at the road leading west, toward the dead who rise from their graves to kill, or so it’s said. Despite my teasing, I have been keeping track since I left home and headed… away. God, anywhere but there, where the ghosts of Sarah and Adam linger every second of every day—

More whiskey. God, there’s never enough whiskey.

“Best travel during the day,” the bartender counsels, as I settle my tab with a little extra tacked on and get ready to head out. “They like to feed at night. I hear tell the whole territory’ll be overrun by them things before the end of the year.”

I heard that about California—except it wasn’t supposed to last the summer, and it’s still there.

“I think I’ll be just fine,” I tell him. “Thanks for the concern, but I don’t put much stock in stories about the dead rising. End of Days is a long ways off, yet.”

“These ain’t the dead,” he whispers. “Not them—demons. Demons from Hell.”

I grin a death’s head grin.

"I’ve been to Hell,” I tell him coldly. “Never saw them there.”

******

The night is colder than I’d planned, so the fire’s bigger than is probably safe, but I’m not in the mood to be charitable to anyone looking to rob me. The roads are becoming lawless as this sickness—whatever it is—spreads. It’s hard to know who to believe. The papers out East say it’s a form of rabies or bovine madness. The ones to the north call it a wasting disease that rots out the mind and leaves the person beastial. The ones in California and Mexico and here in the West call it a lot of things, but they all add up to the dead walking.

I almost wish they would sometimes.

The flames are full of memories as I stare at them, and the false dawn taunts me for my sleepless night. I’ve heard Eagle Bend is under martial law and I aim to make sure my land isn’t taken. Their graves… I can never live there, but I’ll be damned if someone takes it from me. I tried to send a telegram to Buck a while back, asking after things. He doesn’t always go back there, but I figured Hiram, the telegraph operator, might know where to find him. He usually does.

I didn’t hear a word back—not even from Hiram. Lines are down and relay stations are empty all over this part of the country, with the epidemic running through. Figure maybe the message just didn’t make it. I’m hoping Buck did, though. There’s no real idea of how many are dead, but it’s getting to be more and more every time they try to count. Worse than influenza and smallpox put together. Ole Buck Wilmington has survived both of those already. He’s got it in him to weather this one, too.

Me? Hell, God ain't gonna let me die that easy.

There’s a sound, suddenly, over the crackling of the fire, and my gun’s in my hand in an instant. I haven’t been a good man since Sarah died, drinking, whoring, shooting. A regular bad element. It’s made me fast on the draw, that’s for damn sure. I expect she’d take me to task for the people I’ve killed since she died, but I’m never getting to Heaven, so she’ll have to leave a message with the devil.

A long, wheezing groan shocks me. Somebody hurt out there in the darkness?

“Whoever you are,” I call roughly. “You’d best know I’m not in the mood for much and my pistol ain’t neither.”

Someone else shuffles nearby and I peer into the dim light. There’s more than one of them.

“I’ll shoot if I have to, friends,” I tell them, trying to see with the fire still clouding my night vision. It strikes me suddenly that I’m surrounded. How the hell did they do that? I didn’t hear any of it until it was too late.

Well, not exactly too late. I haven’t lived this long being a bad man without being good at it.

I fire toward the wheeze I heard first and the shade of a body hits the ground with a thud. No scream, no grunt… There’s another shift in the trees about fifteen yards from me, and I fire, hearing a body move with what I hope is impact. But again, there’s no sound.

“Why don’t you show yourselves?” I cry out, spooked despite myself. Christ, they’re silent!

And then they oblige. They show themselves and I know a terror so different from that of seeing my burned out homestead, but no less intense. I count twelve shadows in the growing dawn, and they are stepping forward, not in a coordinated advance, but as if compelled by the flames. Or me...

They’re dead. It’s my first thought as two _things_ move into the fire’s light. Their skin is sunken and death-white in the flames’ glow, hair stringy, clothes falling off one of them like he’s been wearing them for weeks. And there’s nothing I can read in their clouded eyes, no cunning, no malice, no thought. But they know I’m here, and I don’t know how I can tell it, but they’re _hungry_.

I fire at one, winging him. A black man, big and burly. His body torques to the side with the impact, and he walks forward again, the blankness in his eyes freezing my blood. I fire again, this time aiming for his head, and he drops like a stone. The white man beside him follows suit and I just keep firing as more approach. A Chinaman, Indians, a black woman... God forgive me, a girl who couldn’t be more than seventeen. They’re fast, some of them, and I ain't never reloaded this quick before. Last one is all but on top of me and the smell of it that close up has my gorge rising.

The tip of the sun is rising now, as I sit shaking among them. Corpses that were living. People I killed who were already dead.

Christ, I thought the demons in my mind were the worst I would ever run into. These, though... I look up finally as the sunlight hits me full in the face. I need to move. Find Buck—find someone. Go home…

My horse is wheezing hard, blood frothing at her mouth. There’s a bite—Jesus, a _human_ bite, on her shoulder and signs that they’ve been feeding at her… Whatever was in my stomach comes up on the dust in front of my boots and I take a minute to breathe.

I haven’t had this mare long, and it looks like I won’t have her any longer. Even as I approach, she stumbles where she stands, whinnying in her pain.

“Easy girl,” I whisper, taking off her saddle and bridle and dropping them next to my saddlebags by the fire. “Easy now, you’re okay.” My gun is cold in my hand—I barely even realized I was still gripping it until I had to let it go to take her things just now—and I raise it to her head, petting her softly with my other hand. “There you go, pretty one,” I whisper, lining up the shot to put her out of her misery. They say no one’s ever seen a horse survive the epidemic, and I believe them. Even if one could pull through eventually, who’d let them be in this kind of pain? “You’re okay.”

The bullet goes in clean and she drops as silently as the corpses around me. The carnage twists my stomach and I hold back from losing control again. Instead, I blankly bend down and pick up my bags, sling my saddle over my shoulder, and walk.

Christ, I got no idea what the hell I’m walking into now. But if this is what people are facing, somebody’s got to help. Funny how I think it should be me. Ain’t been much for helping the world since that fire took my life from me.

Guess maybe Sarah won’t have to chide me for being such a bad man after all, because, though it seems a world of stupid, I head west toward home.

And whatever else I find there.

*****  
the end


End file.
